I think that to the extent that other labs are “not far behind” (such as FAIR), this is substantially an artifact of them being caught up in a competitive arms race. Catching up to “nearly SOTA” is usually much easier than “advancing SOTA”, and I’m fairly persuaded by the argument that the top 3 labs are indeed ideologically motivated in ways that most other labs aren’t, and there would be much less progress in dangerous directions if they all shut down because their employees all quit.
I think that to the extent that other labs are “not far behind” (such as FAIR), this is substantially an artifact of them being caught up in a competitive arms race. Catching up to “nearly SOTA” is usually much easier than “advancing SOTA”, and I’m fairly persuaded by the argument that the top 3 labs are indeed ideologically motivated in ways that most other labs aren’t, and there would be much less progress in dangerous directions if they all shut down because their employees all quit.
And they would start developing web apps at Microsoft or go to XAI, inflection, and Chinese labs?
Am I in crazy town? Did we not see what happened when there was an attempt to slightly modify OpenAI, let alone shut it down.